We've all had those routers that just don't cooperate, and every once in a while lose connection and need to be rebooted (or rather, unplugged and then plugged back in). Here's how to do it without walking across your whole house.

If this happens to you a lot, your router may have a larger underlying issue that needs to be fixed—perhaps the firmware needs an update, or your router is not cooperating with your ISP and you need to give them a call. If it happens only once in a while, though, and you have yet to find a defining solution (maybe you just have a cheap router), here's an easy way to reboot your router without having to be near it.

Note that you'll need to have administrator access to the router. If this is your personal, home router, this is easy. Chances are, the router is still using the default username and password for that model, which is readily available information. You can also do a hard reset of your router by using a paper clip to press the reset button on the back. If you'd rather not restore the factory settings, though, and you have a backup of your config file, you can also use previously mentionedRouterPassView to find your username and password.

Windows only: RouterPassView is a freeware application that taps into a router's configuration …
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To reboot the router when the connection goes down, just type in your router's IP address in the address bar of any browser. The IP address should be easily viewable in your computer's network preferences, though it's usually http://192.168.1.1 or something similar. Every router's settings page is different, but you should be able to reboot the router just by going to basic settings and hitting the "save" or "apply" button without making any changes—this will reboot your router and hopefully get your connection up and running again.

This information is an amalgamation of information from commenters over at Lifehacker Australia and a bit of Googling. I've tested it as much as I can, but I can't verify that this works for restoring lost connections that require an unplug/replug (since I cannot reproduce the event that would cause that type of connection loss), so let us know if this works for you in the comments.